This invention relates to the field of electronic games, and more specifically to an interactive CD ROM video game with a method for real time composing of the music score that is used by the video game. The method of permutating music allows for the control of varying the basic themes and rhythms of the video game so as to constantly provide for new musical passages within the score, also maintaining a variation of the original music though out the history of the video game.
It has been discovered that video games use music to enhance the over all atmosphere of the game in play. By adding dramatic and emotional music in the right section of the video game, the player has a much more exciting gaming experience. In music scores written for motion pictures, if the music is a predefined composition and played repeatedly can destroy the plot and annoy the movie audience. A background musical score which has continuity with the original theme but is evolving continuously, will be background music and will not interfere with the movie.
In previous video games the music score had to be completely prerecorded, as MIDI data or digital sound samples, in order to provide sound though out the game play. This could be as much or more than an hour of music taking up valuable memory space, as well as the time needed to access the information from the CD ROM media, causing conflicts between the image data and the music data that must be retrieved. If memory is limited, then the music is fixed by prerecorded sequences and the same sequences would be heard over and over again.
It is desirable to provide an improved musical composition system and method for limiting the amount of prerecorded music, by creating new music during the play of the game using the basic themes and rhythms provided at the installation of the video game media. By using the method of the present embodiment the amount of memory needed by the video game to store prerecorded musical passages is decreased, because only the starting themes and rhythms need to be stored, thus providing a large amount of music without the expense of the added memory storage.